There's an intriguing exercise in Paul Heyne's "The Economic Way of Thinking" that asks, as a thought experiment, what would happen if a helicopter simply dropped cash on groups of people that needed it--the thinking being that if people have money, someone will figure out some way to get them the goods and services they need.

(There's obvious security and fairness problems with this method of distributing aid, but if these could be solved somehow, this approach "fixes" some of the problems that afflict traditional approaches, such as the way in which they disrupt existing businesses, and make it difficult for new businesses to sustain themselves.)